San Dieguito Union High School District:
$8.3 million for six projects

City of Santee:
$3.1 million for seven projects

San Diego State University:
$2.4 million for one project

City of Lemon Grove:
$1 million for two projects

Fallbrook Public Utility District:
$292,091 for one project

San Diego County has snagged 20 percent of $800 million in federal stimulus-backed financing for government solar projects nationwide, thanks to a team effort by city officials, school leaders, engineers and college students.

Local public agencies are poised to get $154.6 million in bond financing, which would pay for installations increasing the region's solar capacity by 40 percent.

“It means more green jobs and more renewable power for the people of San Diego,” said Lisa Bicker, chief executive of CleanTECH San Diego, a nonprofit group that coordinated many of the applications and announced the funding yesterday.

If all the projects are built, they would add 20 megawatts of solar power to the 50 megawatts now installed in the county. The region uses about 2,500 total megawatts at peak usage on a typical day and more than 4,000 when the weather is hot.

The San Diego Unified School District alone received nearly 10 percent of the national funding — $74.3 million for 111 projects — nearly twice that of the entire state of New Jersey, the second-biggest state recipient after California.

The federal support comes in Clean Renewable Energy Bonds, on which the government would pay 70 percent of the interest in the form of tax credits for investors.

The agencies will have to pay back the money they borrow, though the idea is that they will use the money they save on energy bills to do so.

The public agencies have three years to decide whether to issue the bonds.

San Diego Unified, for instance, is viewing the $74 million allocation in the context of its overall borrowing. The bonds would be in addition to $2.1 billion in construction bonds voters approved a year ago through Proposition S.

“We have to figure out what our bonding capacity is and make sure how we repay them,” district spokesman Bernie Rhinerson said.

The region's dominance was the result of an effort designed to quickly put together applications that met federal guidelines, Bicker said.

Knowing that the Internal Revenue Service would allocate the bonds from the smallest application to the biggest, the San Diego County agencies split up their requests into almost 300 applications.

Nationally, there were nearly 1,000 applications representing more than $3 billion in requests.

Students at the University of California San Diego developed software to use aerial images from Google to estimate the solar capacity of rooftops.

A municipal underwriter, Stone & Youngberg, helped evaluate which applications would result in cost savings, a federal requirement.

And local engineers agreed to look over the applications to ensure they met federal specifications.

“I haven't heard of anyone else doing it quite so systematically,” said Adam Browning, executive director of The Vote Solar Initiative, an advocacy group in San Francisco.

“San Diego should be commended for making maximum use of the stimulus money to try to bring clean energy to the city and all the benefits to the residents,” Browning said.

The result will make solar affordable for many local public agencies, said Byron Washom, who oversees energy strategies for UCSD.

“It is extremely low-cost borrowing that none of us would have access to otherwise,” he said about the bonds.

For UCSD, the bonds will mean 3 megawatts of university-owned solar power, Washom said. The school now has more than 1 megawatt, which was installed and is owned by private companies that sell power to the school.

The bonds come at a key time because solar panel prices have been dropping, Washom said.

He expects companies to compete fiercely for the 20 megawatts of solar to be installed over the next three years.

Chula Vista, which landed nearly $30 million for 34 projects, wouldn't have been able to put together nearly as many of the 12-page applications without help, said Brendan Reed, the city's environmental resources manager.